Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals

The cable expects its industry-wide $1 billion energy bill to quadruple soon. The SCTE's Energy 2020 project has calculated that between 73 percent and 83 percent of cable’s overall energy consumption is by hubs and headends, and it's determined to reduce that figure.

Suddenlink has added the El Rey Network in some of its markets. El Rey Network is an English-language general entertainment channel founded by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, and features “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” and the Lucha Libre wrestling series “Lucha Underground.”

Time Warner Cable flipped the “on” switch to its $85 million National Data Center West facility near Denver over the weekend. Time Warner Cable first broke ground on expanding the national data center, which is located in the Denver suburb of Centennial, in June, 2013.

General Communications, Inc. (GCI) has wrapped up its $300 million deal for Alaska Communication’s wireless business. The deal, which was announced in December, included Alaska Communications' wireless subscriber base and its 33 percent interest in a partnership between the companies known as The Alaska Wireless Network LLC

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DSLNA) has certified the first wave of products from its members that support its trick mode specifications. The trick mode video specs, which include the support of fast-forward, re-wind and frame-by-frame function, are a mandatory feature of DLNA’s interoperability guidelines.

In 1931, an Austrian rocket designer launched a rocket from Schöckl, Austria, containing 102 letters. Friedrich Schmiedl operated the rocket by remote control, and it landed by parachute at Radegund, a small village about three kilometers away. This date is regarded by many as the beginning of rocket mail delivery.

The latest class of inductees to the Cable TV Pioneers will bring 16 new members. The organization will again hold its induction banquet coincident with the NCTA’s annual trade show, this year renamed INTX. This banquet will mark the group’s 49th class induction.

The FCC is said to be developing a plan to curtail or even void state laws that prohibit municipal broadband. The indications are accumulating that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler isn’t backing off on any of his threats to bring the communications industry to heel.

Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications will be joining Sling TV’s OTT lineup after the two companies struck a deal that included multi-stream rights for live and VOD content. The terms of the agreement included the flagship Univision Network, UniMás, UDN (Univision Deportes Network), Galavisión, El Rey Network, Bandamax, De Película, as well as Univision and UniMás broadcast stations nationwide.

In order to expand its reach into more households, Intel announced a deal to buy Munich, Germany-based Lantiq, which is a supplier of broadband access and home networking technologies. Terms of the deal, which is slated to close over the next 90 days after passing customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, weren’t released.

San Diego-based Mushroom Networks recently released “VoIP Armor,” which was designed to improve the voice quality and reliability of VoIP calls by creating a bonded IP tunnel. VoIP Armor is built into Mushroom Networks’ flagship Truffle Broadband Bonding offerings, which aggregate and orchestrate multiple Internet access lines.

Whose Internet is it anyway? Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, says he's keeping that question in mind as he pitches the biggest regulatory shake-up to the telecommunications industry since 1996, when people still used noisy modems and referred to the "information superhighway" as a fun way to buy books or check the weather.

AT&T poured the most money into the auction, shelling out $18.2 billion in provisional winning bids (PWB). Verizon spent $10.4 billion in the auction. T-Mobile spent about $1.8 billion. Dish Network and its allies surprised by spending more on PWBs than estimated.

Cablevision Systems is suing Verizon for false advertising claims again, this time charging its rival with misleading and deceptive advertising claims about Wi-Fi service. Cablevision is objecting to Verizon’s promotions of its new FiOS Quantum gateway.

Barring delays, Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable would have been completed by February. But there have been delays. Squabbles among companies who are party to the review, about who can see what documents in the proceeding, have repeatedly delayed the review process.